Orthodox tea is a major export oriented cash crop farming of eastern hilly districts of Nepal. Both tea estate garden and small farmers are involving in tea farming. This article is the outcome of both desk top and field study conducted between the months of June and August 2009. The study found that small farmers sell their green tea leaves mainly to locally established tea processing industri...

Green tea is manufactured from the leaves of the plant Camellia sinensis and has been regarded to possess anti-cancer, anti-obesity, anti-atherosclerotic, antidiabetic and antimicrobial effects. The main bioactive components present in green tea are polysaccharides, flavonoids, vitamins B, catechin compounds, fluoride and etc. Among them catechin compounds have been proven to have a variety of ...

This experiment was conducted at National Tea Research Institute (NTRI), Shinkiari, Mansehra during 2005-06 with the objectives to find and recommend the most suitable growing environment with a better combination of polythene tube colour i.e. black or transparent for the successful raising of tea seedlings. Tea (Camellia sinensis L.) seedlings were raised in polythene tubes (black and transpar...

BACKGROUND Tea is the world's most popular non-alcoholic beverage. China and India are known to be the largest tea producing countries and recognized as the centers for the domestication of the tea plant (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze). However, molecular studies on the origin, domestication and relationships of the main teas, China type, Assam type and Cambod type are lacking. METHODOLOGY...

Caffeine, a purine alkaloid, is a key component of many popular drinks, most notably tea and coffee, yet most plant scientists know little about its biochemistry and molecular biology. A gene from tea leaves encoding caffeine synthase, an N-methyltransferase that catalyses the last two steps of caffeine biosynthesis, has been cloned and the recombinant enzyme produced in E. coli. Similar genes ...

Summer grown green tea is less popular due to bitterness and high astringency, which are attributed to high levels of tea polyphenols (TP) and low levels of amino acids (AA) in tea leaves (Camellia sinensis L.). Brassinosteroids (BRs), a group of steroidal plant hormones can regulate primary and secondary metabolism in a range of plant species under both normal and stress conditions. However, s...

The history of tea is poorly known, mainly due to the questionable identification of decayed tea plants in archaeological samples. This paper attempts to test the utility of calciphytoliths (calcium oxalate crystals) for the identification of tea in archaeological samples. It provides the first survey of the macropatterns of calciphytoliths in several species of Theaceae and common non-Theaceae...

The tea aphid, Toxoptera aurantii Boyer (Hemiptera: Aphididae), is a major pest of the tea plant, Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze (Theaceae). The attraction of the aphids to different colors and volatile compounds from tea shoots was investigated. Fourteen compounds were identified using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry from headspace samples of intact tea shoot volatiles (ITSV). Electroph...

Tea plant (Camellia sinensis) leaf is an important non-alcoholic beverage resource. The application of quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) has a profound significance for the gene expression studies of tea plant, especially when applied to tea leaf development and metabolism. In this study, nine candidate reference genes (i.e., CsACT7, CsEF-1α, CseIF-4α, CsGAPDH, CsPP2A, ...

Green tea, which is produced from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, is one of the most popular beverages worldwide. Over the past 30 years or more, scientists have studied this plant in respect to potential health benefits. Research has shown that the main components of green tea that are associated with health benefits are the catechins. The four main catechins found in green tea are:...